Revelations
Essays on Striptease and Sexuality
Dragu, Margaret, and Harrison, A.S.A.
Publisher: Nightwood Editions, London, United Kingdom
Year Published: 1988
Pages: 176pp Price: $15.95 ISBN: 0-88971-117-8
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX3757
A sympathetic look at a much-maligned art form.
Abstract:
According to Revelations, "from a historical perspective, strippers can be seen as women who are in active revolt against the dictate that their sexuality is shameful." "Strippers and other sexual entertainers undertake the job of pushing on our sexual limits in one way or another -- by testing them, defying them, or even just exposing them."
Revelations rejects the view that sexuality is dirty and should be hidden. It argues that "the problem with sex shows is not that they are sexual, but that they so often cheapen or belittle sexuality." The authors look forward to a day when sexual entertainment evolves and improves, becoming more meaningful for both men and women. They say that "sexual repression in general, and particularly the repression of women's sexuality, is at the base of our sexual distress as a society." "Real equality for women can only come with the acceptance of women's sexuality, and the release of all taboos associated with it."
[Abstract by Ulli Diemer]
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
The Striptease Establishment
The aesthetic ground rules of stripping
Consumer's Guide to Strippers
An exposition of stripper types
Why Queen Elizabeth Doesn't Strip
The stripper as whore
Revelations
The stripper as activist
Vice
Vice cops and their quarry
The Cock's Dance
Male strippers as a sexual coming of age for women
Honour and Jealousy
Club politics and pecking orders
The Stripper and the Gangster
The mythical partnership
Boss Daddy
The patriarchal two-step
Getting Down with the Boys
Men tell why they want strippers
At the Shrine of the Stripper
Art and transcendence in the strip club
Glossary
Bibliography
Books on Stripping and Sexuality
Subject Headings
